The internet at 40 + Digital media | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/series/internet-at-40+media/digital-media
Indexen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2016Fri, 09 Dec 2016 17:45:23 GMT2016-12-09T17:45:23Zen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2016The Guardianhttps://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.pnghttps://www.theguardian.com
Ivy Bean: the oldest tweeter in townhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/ivy-bean-oldest-tweeter
She may be 104, but Ivy Bean is becoming a celebrity on Twitter. Chris Evans has blown her a kiss and Peter Andre even went to visit her<p>At 104, Ivy Bean may be the oldest person in Bradford. She is also, thanks to the internet, one of its most famous residents. After maxing out the friend capacity on Facebook (with 5,000), Bean graduated to Twitter in 2008, and from her residential home on the outskirts of the city she now offers daily insights into her life for some 48,000-odd followers.</p><p>Hillside Manor is home to 16 residents. I meet Bean in the lunch room, where each Friday she eats fish and chips, then tweets to let her followers know how it went down. She is amiable and chatty, despite problems with her hearing today: "I could hear right as rain yesterday, but my hearing aid's jiggered. Give it a clout," she instructs.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/ivy-bean-oldest-tweeter">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/ivy-bean-oldest-tweeterPhotograph: Bob Collier/PA Wire/Press Association ImagesIvy Bean, who is 104, has become a big fan of Twitter. Photograph: Bob Collier/PA Wire/Press Association ImagesPhotograph: Bob Collier/PA Wire/Press Association ImagesIvy Bean, who is 104, has become a big fan of Twitter. Photograph: Bob Collier/PA Wire/Press Association ImagesSarah Phillips2009-10-23T07:00:10ZPass notes 2,670: The internethttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/passnotes-the-internet
It's 40 years old, but how much do you know about it?<p><strong>Age:</strong> 40.</p><p><strong>Appearance:</strong> Flat, rectangular; dimensions vary.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/passnotes-the-internet">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/passnotes-the-internetPhotograph: F1online digitale Bildagentur Gm/AlamyThe internet: a boundless virtual universe. Photograph: F1online digitale Bildagentur Gm/AlamyPhotograph: F1online digitale Bildagentur Gm/AlamyThe internet: a boundless virtual universe. Photograph: F1online digitale Bildagentur Gm/AlamyGuardian Staff2009-10-23T07:00:09ZHow the Guardian reported the rise and rise of the nethttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/how-guardian-reported-internet
First encounters read like the reports of an exotic Victorian explorer<p>IIn April 1994, the Guardian published a <a href="http://archive.theguardian.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLevelEntityToSaveGifMSIE_DIGITALARCHIVE&amp;Type=text/html&amp;Locale=english-skin-custom&amp;Path=GUA/1994/04/30&amp;ChunkNum=-1&amp;ID=Ar02300&amp;PageLabel=23" title="daring piece of investigative journalism">daring piece of investigative journalism</a> chronicling the promises, pitfalls and peculiar vernacular of a new and unexplored territory named Internet. It was, according to the article, a place "where pornographers and Nazis walk freely, where criminals roam unchecked and where anarchy reigns".</p><p>The piece, by Jonathan Freedland, made liberal use of cutting-edge online phrases such as "junior cybernauts" and "Netties". It mapped the uncharted territories of "Throbnet, WildNet and Kinknet" and noted the growth of a "cottage industry" made up of "services that enable users to look at raunchy pictures".</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/how-guardian-reported-internet">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/how-guardian-reported-internetTom Meltzer2009-10-23T07:00:08ZThe mysterious cable that links the UK to the UShttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/mysterious-cable-uk-us
Beneath the sands of a north Cornwall beach runs a powerful internet cable connecting the UK and the US. But its precise location is a secret, and you won't find it on any Ordnance Survey map<p>I'm standing on the internet. Six feet beneath me, buried in the soft sand of a north Cornwall beach popular with surfers, is one of the most important telecommunications cables in the country — the £250m Apollo North OALC-4 SPDA cable that provides the most powerful physical internet connection between the UK and the US. The only clue to its presence is a tall sign in the beach car park, which reads "Telephone cable". It is not pointed towards the people sucking on ice-creams and waxing their surf boards; rather, it is directed at passing fishermeh, warning them not to catch their nets or anchors on this fibre-optic cable, which is just a fraction thicker than a garden hosepipe.</p><p>The 3,800 mile-long cable was laid across the Atlantic seabed in 2003 and runs from the Cornish coast to Fire Island just off New York's Long Island. The last time you sent an email, did a Google search, watched a YouTube clip, or tweeted, there's a very good chance that some of that data travelled at the speed of light through this very location.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/mysterious-cable-uk-us">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/mysterious-cable-uk-usPhotograph: Jim Wileman/GuardianA powerful internet cable running under the sea connects the UK to the US. This sign, on a north Conrwall beach, is a warning to fishermen not to catch their nets or anchors on it. Photograph: Jim WilemanPhotograph: Jim Wileman/GuardianA powerful internet cable running under the sea connects the UK to the US. This sign, on a north Conrwall beach, is a warning to fishermen not to catch their nets or anchors on it. Photograph: Jim WilemanLeo Hickman2009-10-23T07:00:08ZThe Guardian's first forays on to the internethttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/guardians-first-forays-on-internet
The thrilling - and sometimes terrifying – birth of guardian.co.uk<p>History does not record why John Edward Taylor settled on the title Manchester Guardian for his new radical newspaper in 1821, but happily I can tell you exactly how we chose the name of the Guardian's website 176 years later. It was all down to Simon Waldman's father's shop.</p><p>We'd been brainstorming possible website names in what was then endearingly called the New Media Lab. We wanted something that would convey a leap from the constraints of the printed page. Breaking of shackles! Boundless possibilities! There were some really bad ideas, then one slightly less bad: Guardian Unlimited. "That's it!" exclaimed Waldman, then the Guardian's "deputy internet editor". "My father once had a shop called Fabrix Unlimited!"</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/guardians-first-forays-on-internet">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaThe GuardianFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/guardians-first-forays-on-internetPhotograph: GuardianIan Katz in 1997 in the Guardian's 'new media lab'.Photograph: GuardianIan Katz in 1997 in the Guardian's 'new media lab'.Ian Katz2009-10-23T07:00:07ZInternet: the early yearshttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-memories-beginning-dialup
Remember dial-up? Text only? Mosaic? Early adopters and web entrepreneurs on their first experiences of the net <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-memories-beginning-dialup">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaWikipediaFriends ReunitedHuffington PostFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-memories-beginning-dialupGuardian Staff2009-10-23T07:00:06ZFrom the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet historyhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-history
What links a broken laser pointer, a coffee pot and the elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo?<p>In late 1971 Ray Tomlinson, an engineer working on a time-sharing system called Tenex, combined two programs named Cpynet and SNDMSG in order to send the first ever network email. It had been possible to send email from one user to another on a single computer for nearly 10 years but Tomlinson was the first to use the primitive Arpanet to send text from one computer to another.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-history">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaEmailTim Berners-LeeSearch enginesBloggingeBayWikipediaYouTubeSocial networkingFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-historyPhotograph: Andy Hall/taken from Obs picture libraryCyberia, Britain's first internet cafe Photograph: Andy Hall/ObserverPhotograph: Andy Hall/taken from Obs picture libraryCyberia, Britain's first internet cafe Photograph: Andy Hall/ObserverTom Meltzer and Sarah Phillips2009-10-23T07:00:05ZWhat will the internet look like 40 years in the future? | Emily Bellhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-future-websites
Websites are old hat, everything is portable and we'll be able to browse space. The Guardian director of digital content imagines our online life in 2049<p>In 1995 I was part of a press party that was flown out to Microsoft, where a rueful executive told us, "I'm in charge of the product that Bill Gates said would never happen." It was the launch of Microsoft's first web browser, Internet <sup>­ </sup>Explorer. Gates, the richest and most powerful chief executive in the world – and a highly technologically literate one at that – had been an "internet denier" in terms of its transformative nature.</p><p>For me there were two memorable aspects of that trip; one was an audience with Gates, with his customary homecut hair and stained shirt. He told the press, "If you can imagine something that might happen technologically, it will probably happen in the next 10 years; if you can't imagine it, it might take a generation." The other was an Internet Explorer T-shirt, which I wore throughout an extended labour two years later. At the time it was an apt metaphor for any kind of technical project delivery.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-future-websites">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaBill GatesGoogleMicrosoftTim Berners-LeeFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-future-websitesPhotograph: Stephen Ferry/Getty ImagesMicrosoft's Bill Gates was an early 'internet denier' before the company launched its Internet Explorer browser. Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Stephen Ferry/Getty ImagesMicrosoft's Bill Gates was an early 'internet denier' before the company launched its Internet Explorer browser. Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Getty ImagesEmily Bell2009-10-23T07:00:05ZForty years of the internet: how the world changed for everhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-40-history-arpanet
In October 1969, a student typed 'LO' on a computer - and the internet was born<p>Towards the end of the summer of 1969 –&nbsp;a few weeks after the moon landings, a few days after Woodstock, and a month before the first broadcast of Monty Python's Flying Circus – a large grey metal box was delivered to the office of Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. It was the same size and shape as a household refrigerator, and outwardly, at least, it had about as much charm. But Kleinrock was thrilled: a photograph from the time shows him standing beside it, in requisite late-60s brown tie and brown trousers, beaming like a proud father.</p><p>Had he tried to explain his excitement to anyone but his closest colleagues, they probably wouldn't have understood. The few outsiders who knew of the box's existence couldn't even get its name right: it was an IMP, or "interface message processor", but the year before, when a Boston company had won the contract to build it, its local senator, Ted Kennedy, sent a telegram praising its ecumenical spirit in creating the first "interfaith message processor". Needless to say, though, the box that arrived outside Kleinrock's office wasn't a machine capable of fostering understanding among the great religions of the world. It was much more important than that.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-40-history-arpanet">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaTwitterSocial mediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/internet-40-history-arpanetPhotograph: Bob Sacha/CorbisInternet business cables in California. Photograph: Bob Sacha/CorbisPhotograph: Bob Sacha/CorbisInternet business cables in California. Photograph: Bob Sacha/CorbisOliver Burkeman2009-10-23T07:00:04ZI wrote the Guardian's first bloghttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/i-wrote-guardians-first-blog
But blogging then was one-way traffic – readers couldn't join the debate<p>On 17 April 2000, I wrote the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/weblogindex/0,,340346,00.html" title="first ever blogpost">first ever blogpost</a> for the Guardian's website. None of us knew at the time how blogging would morph into the noisy, boisterous online experience it is today. In fact, it wasn't even called "blogging" back then. The term is a contraction of "weblog" and my daily offering was, somewhat quaintly, known as the "Guardian Weblog".</p><p>And that's exactly what I published on that first day nearly a decade ago: a "log" of what I thought to be the most interesting reads on the web at that time. Among nine recommendations, there was a link to an "interview" with the search engine Ask Jeeves, an article in the Zimbabwe Independent asking how the opposition parties were ever going to topple Robert Mugabe, and a piece in the San José Mercury News wondering how many more words with an "e" prefix we could possibly take? (It would be a few years before our weariness would move on to Apple's ubiquitous "i" prefix.)</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/i-wrote-guardians-first-blog">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/i-wrote-guardians-first-blogLeo Hickman2009-10-23T07:00:02ZNet contributions: how the internet has influenced the English languagehttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/net-contributions-language
Familiar words have been transformed and new ones have emerged.<strong> </strong>Here are some favourites<p>'I believe it to be the trend that is going to have the greatest impact on the English language in the 21st century," linguist David Crystal once wrote of the internet, and certainly it has proved to be an area of rich lexical change.</p><p>The meanings of well-known words (bookmark, surf, spam, web) have shifted dramatically, while our vocabularies have expanded to accommodate new ones. The lower-case is in ascendance, @ has flourished, the full stop has been reinterpreted as the "dot" and entire trends have been refreshed by the prefix "cyber". Here are some of my favourite internet contributions to the language:</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/net-contributions-language">Continue reading...</a>InternetTechnologyDigital mediaMediaFri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/net-contributions-languagePhotograph: Darren Coleman/RetnaOne of the new internet terms is "Rick-rolling" – when a posted link leads to a YouTube video of a Rick Astley hit. Photograph: Darren Coleman/RetnaPhotograph: Darren Coleman/RetnaOne of the new internet terms is "Rick-rolling" – when a posted link leads to a YouTube video of a Rick Astley hit. Photograph: Darren Coleman/RetnaLaura Barton2009-10-23T07:00:02Z